Die Weisheit des Silen umspielt das Motiv der Misere des menschlichen Lebens. Mit dem Werk des englischen Dichters Lord Byron ist es zu einer zentralen Denkfigur geworden, die Literatur und Kunste in der ersten Halfte des 19. Jahrhunderts in vielfacher Weise grundiert hat. Heinrich Heines Variationen des Themas reichen von seinem Fruhwerk bis in die spatesten Dichtungen. Die Weisheit des Silen ist ihm stets Gegenbild und Anreiz zu jenem "Lebensbankett", mit dem er das Ziel seines gesellschaftspolitischen Engagements begrundet. Diese Studie stellt Heines Werk erstmals umfassend in den Horizont der Pariser Literatur- und Kunstszene der Zeit. Im Vergleich mit literarischen Werken (Byron, Cervantes, Gautier, Nerval, Balzac, Musset, Banville, Lamartine, Baudelaire usw.) legtsie ein bewusstseinsgeschichtliches Fundament frei, das bis weit in die Moderne fortgewirkt hat. Heines Wertschatzung der bildenden Kunst (Murillo, Decamps, Robert, Delaroche, Delacroix usw.) und der darstellenden Kunste (Ballett, Pantomime, Commedia dell'arte) wurzelt in der Poetik eines ausgesprochen 'malerischen Stils' (Victor Hugo). Der Supernaturalismus- nicht sowohl Stilform, als vielmehr Ausweis einer kognitiven Differenz- ist der Schlussel zu einem Kunstverstandnis, das bestandig zwischen l'art-pour-l'art und politischem Engagement zu oszillieren scheint.

In the early modern age the 'commentary' genre experienced an astounding upswing. On the one hand, scholars harked back to the use of this text variety in ancient times, on the other they used commentaries to respond to contemporary challenges in the fields of literature and scholarship. The use of commentaries is an absolutely essential component in transformation processes like modernization and secularization. The volume assembles the papers delivered at a conference in Wolfenb-ttel and contributes to the more precise understanding of a widely underrated scholarly practice located between innovation, subversion, and tradition.

The volume traces the cognitive changes to which the understanding of literature was exposed from the late 16th century onwards. Engagement with the literature of antiquity was determined by the development of a philological form of criticism that was at odds with Christian apologetics in a time of confessional dissension. Seen thus, 'modern' literature from Opitz to Brockes appears as an integral part of a much more comprehensive culture of scholarly endeavour. The author paints a graphic picture of the unity and tensions evident in the European respublica litteraria of the early modern age, complete with the social and intellectual constants and upheavals it was also subject to.

Goethe's ASeefahrtA (1776) was written a few months after the poet's arrival in Weimar. The study has a dual aim. It shows first that the poem was a response by Goethe to Salomon Gessner's idyll ADer SturmA, a response based on a poetological program indebted to Herder's concept of the ode form and Diderot's theory of drama. In addition, it outlines the anthropological horizons within which 18th century sea poetry developed. Goethe's poem is the presentation of a 'physical and moral' conflict. Against the background of a tradition that goes back to the 107th Psalm, it unfolds a motivic constellation of genuinely Horatian poetic inspiration and actualizes its relevance for Goethe's own life-world.

The volume assembles the papers given at the international and interdisciplinary conference AConcept and Problem of Philology 1580-1730A held in July 1998. They provide insight into the multifarious changes undergone by the term in the Early Modern Age, relating this phenomenon to the history of ideas, the history of concepts, and social history. In addition they determine the locus of philological practice in a number of concrete contexts by discussing the role it played in various pragmatic and intellectual domains in the period in question, including textual criticism, comparative studies and polymathy.